Perhaps One of the Greatest Days in Shoop Family History

When your family has dreams that finally come true, you make celebratory cupcakes!

Wednesday May 6th, 2020 will go down in Shoop family history for being one of the happiest days of our lives. The day started out like any other day in quarantine, but midday, it drastically changed (for the better). After falling out of bed and begrudgingly starting my school work, I assumed the rest of the day would proceed the same way as the past eight weeks of social distancing had.

I was stationed at my desk doing work, when all of a sudden a heard a "buzz" and saw a notification flash onto my phone screen. Deciding it was high-time for a quick break from work, I grabbed my phone, and let me tell you, the decision to check my phone was one of the smartest choices i've ever made.

I received one of the greatest texts I could have ever imagined. A text message from my brother Jake spanned across my screen and it read, "Yooooooo I was let into NYU!!" After reading this message the only thing I could do was gasp and scream! My eyes opened wider than they ever had before. I bolted from my room and ran down the hall yelling his name with excitement. I threw Jake's bedroom door open only to find he wasn't in there!

I slammed his door shut and flew down the steps with a grin plastered onto my face. My feet hit the cold tiles in the hallway to the kitchen and I heard an "I'm in here" come from my brother in the family room. I picked up speed and jumped at Jake sitting on the couch with my arms wide open. I gave him a big hug and once again all I could do was scream!

All I could manage to squeak out was "YOU'RE GOING TO NYU'S FILM SCHOOL!" My enthusiasm was clearly contagious as the dogs could not stop barking and running around. My dad then came downstairs from his office with the same smile on his face that we all had. We all sat on the couch with the dogs finally settling down on the floor. I was filled with emotions I was not expecting to have on a random day in quarantine. I was, and still am, so proud, overjoyed, and excited for Jake. Watching him put so much work into his portfolio, school work, and extracurriculars, and then seeing it pay off in the form of his dream school, made me so happy. I'm a proud sister, there's no doubt about that.

Applying to college makes me so nervous because someone else is making a decision about your life, for you. These nerves aren't only present when it comes to me applying to college, they were in me when it came to my brother applying to college. Knowing how talented he is and how much he deserved to get into his dream school, but not being able to help him, was difficult. Getting that text message not only eased nerves I'm sure he had, but it calmed mine.

While sitting on the couch as a family my mom also had some good news to tell the family. My mom, Kathleen Shoop, is an incredible author, who writes mainly historical fiction. Just like my brother, I've seen her work hard on perfecting her novels, and I know she deserves all of the awards in the world, and this time she got one! My mom's book series, The Letter Series, won a GOLD Independent Publisher Award!!!

Not only am I a proud sister, I'm an incredibly proud daughter! After hearing both amazing pieces of news I didn't think the day could get any better, and then it did! After a few more hours of school work the family was called back to the living room to watch a senior awards video from school. This ceremony is usually held at the Oaks Theater, but under the current circumstances the senior class had to be honored from home.

The students of the senior class are given awards, scholarships, and recognition for their work over the past years in our school district. Jake was not expecting to get anything, but all of a sudden we heard his name announced by our principal as an award recipient! After receiving this news, I decided celebratory cupcakes were a necessity! I traveled to the grocery store to get the last couple ingredients needed, and came home and got to work!

Jake decided to help assist me in the baking process. He's a master whisker. When the whisking, combining, and pouring was completed, we popped the cupcakes into the oven. Next up on the baking agenda was creating purple icing to top the cupcakes with, in honor of New York University. I made the cupcakes from scratch, but I was planning on just dying white icing purple, but I opened the container and realized I had bought bright blue icing! I figured since blue and red make purple I could just add a bunch of red food coloring to the blue and it would turn purple!

Honestly, this idea only kind of worked. The icing ended up as a silver-purple (the picture looks brown for some reason), but at least it still tasted great! After cooling and frosting the cupcakes we all munched on one in celebration of an unexpectedly, wonderful day! This treat was the icing on the (cup)cake to complete our memorable, perfect day!

Click here for the chocolate cupcake recipe!